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In the minutes between slitting the throat of an elderly priest and being shot dead by French police, a teenage jihadi smiled “happily” at two nuns held hostage during the church attack and engaged them in a conversation about the Koran and Jesus Christ, it has emerged.

The nuns who witnessed the gruesome murder of Father Jacques Hamel on Tuesday by two 19-year-olds in his church in Normandy have recounted their ordeal to the Catholic newspaper La Vie.

Adel Kermiche stormed a church during morning mass in the town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, taking several hostages before killing the priest

Sister Huguette Peron and Sister Helene Decaux said the young men were highly agitated and aggressive during the attack which shocked France, but they quickly calmed down after they had murdered the 85-year-old priest.

"I got a smile from the second (man). Not a smile of triumph, but a soft smile, that of someone who is happy," said Sister Huguette Peron.

One nun managed to escape and alerted the police, leaving Sister Huguette and Sister Helene Decaux, both in their 80s, inside the church with the two men who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (Isil) terror group and who were shot dead after the attack by police.

At one point, Sister Helene got tired and asked to sit down.

"I asked for my walking stick, he (one of the attackers) gave it to me," she said.

Then the attackers began a conversation about religion and asked if the nuns had read the Koran.

"Yes, I respect it like I respect the Bible, I've already read several suras (chapters of the Koran). And those that struck me in particular are the suras about peace," she replied.

"Peace, that's what we want,” one of the attackers responded. “As long as there are bombs on Syria, we will continue our attacks. And they will happen every day. When you stop, we will stop."

Adel Kermiche and Abdelmalik Nabil Petitjean, in a picture released by Isis

"Are you afraid to die?" one of the attackers asked.

Sister Helene said no, then he said: "Why?"

"I believe in God, and I know I will be happy," she said, as she as she silently prayed to herself.

Then the conversation turned to God.

"Jesus cannot be God and a man. It is you who are wrong," one of the jihadis said.

"Perhaps, but too bad," Sister Huguette replied.

She told La Vie that at that moment she was preparing for her own death, not knowing what was coming next.

"Thinking I was going to die, I offered my life to God," she said.

But the jihadis did not kill the two nuns or the elderly couple who were also in the church with them. They at first tried to get out the front door using the nuns and the other woman as human shields.

But police then burst in through a side door and shot the two teenagers dead.